Not perfect. But better. That’s the way you can basically sum up the Pittsburgh Steelers’ entire Week Three game against the Las Vegas Raiders. And it’s certainly an apt way to describe the running game. It was its most successful against Raiders, rushing for a hard-earned 105 yards on 31 attempts, with a different approach than the first two weeks.
Pittsburgh got back to basics. It’d be a stretch to say they were consistently playing “bully ball,” their entire offseason plan, but they were more physical last night. They relied less on creative and more complicated run schemes and leaned more on a downhill north-south run game that focused on winning at the first level and creating movement up front.